


London (Letting Go)

by irisbleufic



Category: Batman: Europa
Genre: Archetypes, Bad Decisions, Bad French, Banter, Batman Europa, Canon-Typical Violence, Casablanca References, Comic Book Violence, Enemies, First Time, Gender Issues, Intersex Character, London, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Only Not Really Because Joker's French Is Perfect, Other, Post-Book(s), Psychological Trauma, Roma | Rome, Superheroes, Supervillains, Tourism, Travel, Villains
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 12:59:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10514250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisbleufic/pseuds/irisbleufic
Summary: A metaphor within a virus within a metaphor.  Even now [. . .], Bruce grudgingly had to admire the brilliant gall of it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> It's hilarious to think that seeing _Lego Batman Movie_ is what led to my checking the batjokes tag for the first time in _years_ —and, subsequently, to my discovery that _Batman: Europa_ was a thing that had happened since the last time I poked my nose into a Batman comic (we're talking no contact since about 2008 – 2009). Anyway, I saw a handful of _Europa_ panels here on Tumblr; most of them made my eyes pop with both gorgeous artwork and compelling dialogue. Now, a couple weeks later, I've got a copy and have read through it. I've also watched some play-throughs of various game segments I didn't know about; Telltale continues to please me with just about everything it touches. From a writing standpoint, I've been away for a while; [**_Five Love Affairs_**](http://archiveofourown.org/works/10465206) is the last thing I wrote for these guys, and it'll be 9 years old in September. I'm treating Europa as an isolated continuum; however, Harley and Ivy do get mention (having grown up on _Batman: The Animated Series_ , I can't imagine a batverse without them around). You'll recognize the dialogue in paragraphs four through nine as dialogue from the final panels of Europa; rather than pick up directly after that fade-to-black, I worked the ending into a segue. Please, _please_ don't read this if you're averse. The very few times I've been sent something along the lines of abuse, I've deleted it on-sight. There's also an undercurrent of my recent identity / monstrosity meditations running through these words. Somehow, using this particular black-humored filter helped.

Just as on Batman’s solitary approach to Kaligari’s in Berlin, just as on his not-so-solitary arrivals at Karl’s Bridge in Prague and the Cirque in Paris, frostbitten February evening yielded to icy dusk. The end of _Masopust_ , Ash Wednesday—had it _only_ been about forty-eight hours before?

Not that Bruce had much reason to note or to observe a Christian holiday outside the context of history. He shifted from one foot to the other, unsteady on legs that ached like those of a man twice his age. By history, here and now, the entirety of it—past and present, personal and impersonal—he was haunted.

Joker returned Bruce’s grin with a wan, bloodied one of his own. His arm was either dislocated at the shoulder or broken high in the humerus—wordplay, grim and coincidental. His face was ghastly in the overcast light, littered with glass-shard cuts from the impact of Bane throwing him down in the dust.

“Say,” he muttered, wiping his mouth on the back of his glove, hungrily eyeing the dark stain. “I don't feel so good. Gimme some more medicine?” he ventured, coyly hopeful.

Bruce caught himself still wearing the vestige of a smile. Glowering, he killed it in an instant.

“Look, just 'cause we're cured doesn't mean the trip is over,” Joker insisted. “Let's go to London, play Jack the Ripper versus Sherlock Holmes. C'mon—let's have some _fun_!”

“Yes,” Bruce agreed dubiously, looming above Joker’s doubled-over frame. “Let’s have some fun…”

Joker shuffled back a few steps. He lurched sideways, eyes wide as he clutched his injured arm.

“Hey…” He swallowed, stumbling in his haste to escape. “Hey, what are you—? Stay away from—”

Bruce’s smile relapsed as he hit Joker, relapsed as hard as the merciless blow he delivered to the side of the man’s head. It faded just as quickly, faded with the sense of urgent pragmatism that set in. 

Authorities would shortly arrive to deal with Bane, who fortunately _wouldn’t_ be waking up soon.

Shouldering Joker almost as easily as he might have done before nearly a week spent languishing in high fever and its skin-wasting, mind-destroying effects, Bruce melted into the shadows of the Coliseum as if he’d always belonged.

Overhead, high in the vaulted ruins, a few remaining bats chittered.

Keeping to side streets and alleys—away from the _Via dei Fiori Imperiali_ , by which they’d arrived in death’s-door delirium—was difficult in Bruce’s state of exhaustion. Cured or not, Joker was right: the trip was far from over. They’d need to run to ground, to _rest_ before undertaking the journey back to Gotham. Bruce wasn’t sure he could pilot the Batwing for long in this condition.

Bruce's wounds—his battered chest, his shattered knuckle, the cut Joker left on his hand— _throbbed_.

 _You saved my life_ , he thought, not with nearly enough resentment. _It's only fair I spare yours._

Joker stirred in the one-armed hold Bruce had on him, his thin, hysterical giggle breaking on a cough.

“That’s right,” he wheezed, momentarily occupied with picking at Bruce’s cape before patting him between the shoulder blades. “Sweep me off my feet. Maybe I had our roles in this tempestuous love affair switched around, eh? Maybe _you’re_ Rick and _I’m_ —”

“Renault?” Bruce grunted, jostling Joker till he stopped moving. “Makes sense. Your French is better.”

“Say the line,” Joker prompted, spindly hand splayed in the middle of Bruce’s back. “The one I—”

“Shut. _Up_ ,” Bruce sighed, pinching what meager flesh he could find over Joker’s hipbone. Which was a glaring mistake— _God_ , was it ever, and Bruce realized it too late.

Joker sighed and hung limp, finally silent, but his fingertips dug briefly into Bruce’s muscle through layers of suit and cape. Outward snap of the precise digits, followed by firmer pressure from Joker’s palm. He rubbed listless circles there, and then _anywhere_ he could reach.

Bruce opened his mouth to protest, but he shut it again just as quickly. His back was in almost as much pain as his lower body; the attention, however fretful, was hypnotically soothing.

“Rock-a-bye Batsy,” Joker mumbled, singsong tone wistful. “You must be just as tired as I am.”

“As soon as we get back to the jet,” Bruce replied, “I’ll make sure I hit you on the opposite side.”

“Oh, _darling_ ,” Joker crooned, yawning in disinterest. “I’m not talking about _sleep_.”

And, goddamn his insatiable curiosity, Bruce took the bait. “Then enlighten me before I drift off.”

Joker’s injured arm swung with each step, his hand catching Bruce’s hip with a twitch of the wrist.

“I’m talking about the game,” Joker said, pinching Bruce in retaliation. “About _playing_ , about the latest utterly _shit_ hand we’ve been dealt.” He molded his hand to the spot with a hiss of pain, first burst of tension since he’d been injured running through his arm. “Pick a card. Any.”

Maybe it was that reality still felt like a shared hallucination, but Joker’s words, whatever he meant by them, pitched Bruce briefly into crisis. They _had_ been dealt a shit hand. They’d been broken.

“Seems to me I’ve already drawn,” Bruce said, hefting Joker roughly for emphasis. “Your turn.”

“I take it back, about you making a terrible straight-man,” said Joker. “Who’d _want_ you to be?”

“No idea,” Bruce said, rounding the next filthy, brick-walled corner until finally, _finally_ , the rusted gates of their scrap-yard hideaway and the Batwing were in sight. “I’m hilarious.”

Once they were safe inside the jet, Joker made no attempt to move from where Bruce had deposited him against the locked-down entrance to the cockpit. He reacted only once Bruce had returned with a medical kit and a pair of handcuffs, his nose wrinkling at the sight of the latter.

“Say, Bats, is this Canasta or German rummy?” he asked. “If it’s the latter, I’m one blue, blue trump.”

“Fitting, considering I picked you up in Berlin,” Bruce agreed, recognizing the reference to certain European card decks’ color-coded, three-joker system. “I’ll dispense with these if you behave.”

“From the standpoint of cartomantic history, you _do_ realize I’m also a dab hand at Euchre,” said Joker, awkwardly making a sign that Bruce hoped meant cross-my-heart. “It’s been just under a week, and I haven’t tried to slaughter you in your sleep. Gimme a little more credit?”

Shrugging, Bruce tossed the handcuffs aside and opened the medical kit, making an extravagant show of preparing the midazolam injection. “I doubt this is enough to knock you out, even at four times the dose,” he told Joker, plunging the needle into Joker’s thigh before the clown could crawl away from him, “but I’m going to have to look at your arm. Regardless of whether it needs to be set or put back into place, most people would rather not be awake for that. _I’d_ rather you not be.”

“I _hate_ you, Bats,” Joker hissed, low and petulant, seized by a full-body shudder as Bruce depressed the plunger at a steady, relentless pace. “Spoiling all my _fun_.”

“I’m enjoying this far less than you are,” Bruce lied, watching as Joker’s shoulders sagged against the wall, amazed that consciousness had begun to drain from him. Perhaps it was his weakened condition.

“Doubt it,” Joker shot back, mustering a macabre, unfocused half-smile as his eyes drifted shut.

For the moment, Bruce left Joker where he sat, eager to strip out of the suit. There was no time to make use of the Batwing’s tiny shower, not if he expected to settle the clown and get them airborne, but freedom of movement without hindrance from cape or cowl would be welcome.

Barefoot, divested of gauntlets and boots, Bruce hefted Joker’s inert form over to the lower bunk, which Bruce, sleepless in his monitoring of Joker overhead, had occupied for the past several nights. He stripped Joker’s jacket, tie, shirt, trousers, and shoes from him with more care than the man deserved.

 _London_. Bruce hated to admit it, but Joker’s accidentally sound logic had struck again.

He dialed Alfred while he stared, mystified, at the clash between Joker’s admittedly dapper sock-garters and his skimpy pink-and-white heart print boxers. It was less that knowledge of said clothing items was foreign, and more that Joker wore nothing but these _while lying in Bruce’s bed_.

“Master Bruce,” Alfred’s voice crackled over the comm. “I can’t tell you what a relief it is to hear from you. Bane, it would seem, has made quite the splash with Interpol. News reports out of Rome—”

“As long as they’ve got it in hand,” said Bruce, wrinkling his nose, rolling Joker onto his left side. They both needed a shower, or in the very _least_ a scrub-down with antiseptic wipes.

Joker sighed heavily in his sleep, startling Bruce as he conducted a cursory examination of Joker’s right arm. Incredibly, the major bones all seemed to be intact; wrenching the dislocated shoulder back into place, however, took more sustained effort than it should have. Double-jointed bastard that he was, Joker could be curiously non-compliant even when unconscious.

“Master Bruce,” prompted Alfred, with concern. “Is everything with _you_ in hand? Where—”

“Rome, but not for much longer,” Bruce replied, re-settling Joker on his back, placing Joker’s arms carefully at his sides. He fetched the medical kit, bringing it back over to the bed, knowing Alfred would want still more elucidation. “My…charge…needed some basic medical attention,” he said, getting to work swabbing the blood off Joker’s bruise-constellated skin. “So do I. As soon as I’ve finished with that, I’ll get us in the air. The safe-house in London, remind me, is it…”

“Much the same as it was last time you stayed,” said Alfred, coolly. “Pristine, if a touch dustier, sir.”

“You don’t approve of me taking him there,” Bruce replied, lingering over the job he was making of Joker’s face. The antiseptic wipes’ acrid scent was somehow preferable to sweat and singed hair.

“I approve of whatever you deem necessary, sir, to get yourself back to Gotham in one piece. Him, to be frank? I couldn’t care _less_ about. But your ideas have…very often run counter to mine.”

Bruce watched Joker’s chest rise sharply as he stroked Joker’s unruly hair back from his forehead. Checking Joker’s hairline for breaks in the skin was superfluous, but he preferred to be thorough.

“I’ll set a course,” Bruce said, yanking up the covers, hoping Joker would sleep until well after their arrival in England. “Notify your most discreet contact. I’ll be in residence for…” Joker twitched, as attempting to throw off the bedclothes. “Several days, at least.”

“As you say, sir,” Alfred said. “Shall I have Ms. Bridlington furnish any particular supplies?”

“An NHS-issue arm sling would suffice,” Bruce replied. “As for the rest, I have what we need.”

“Are you…badly hurt, Master Bruce?” Alfred asked. “Is your—guest? I assume that the virus—”

“Has been neutralized, Alfred,” Bruce reassured him, getting to his feet with a stifled groan. “The sling isn’t for me. I have enough bandages onboard to see to myself.”

“Be careful, sir,” Alfred sighed. “Given your volatile cargo, you’re not out of the woods _yet_.”

For the duration of the two-and-a-half-hour flight, Bruce couldn’t help but dwell on Alfred’s words. Nobody, except maybe the denizens of Gotham’s underworld, knew better than Batman the dangers of keeping close proximity with Joker. That observation, too, had been on point: in these close quarters, it _was_ a wonder neither of them had killed the other in his sleep. At the same time…

There had always been a kind of desire between them, too. Violent, mutual, and _blinding_.

(That Bruce had not instinctively included _perverse_ in his list of qualifiers gave him pause.)

Landing secretly in a semi-rural area outside the city was not the trickiest aspect of their arrival. Re-dressing and manhandling a half-conscious, cranky, ill-disguised Joker—who complained loudly about the hat Bruce stuck on him to cover his hair, as well as about the fact that Bruce refused to let him redo his lipstick—into the nearest village, where Ms. Bridlington waited with a car, _was_.

Joker, in spite of how monstrously fast he’d metabolized the midazolam, had fallen asleep on Bruce’s shoulder by the time they reached the safe-house. Waking him caused a scene, but Joker went quietly inside once Bruce promised he’d _consider_ letting them visit Madame Tussaud’s.

The back-alley entrance looked no more remarkable than that of any other industrial loft in Bermondsey. Pulling up to the curb, behind the wheel of the nondescript sedan, Ms. Bridlington kept a wary eye on both Bruce and Joker until they had exited the back seat.

Leaving Joker huddled against the brick wall, Bruce handed Ms. Bridlington a wad of crisp twenty-pound notes in exchange for a set of keys through the open driver’s side window.

“Didn’t expect the Batman would carry quid on ’im,” she remarked. “What’s wrong with that one?”

Bruce glanced over his shoulder at Joker, who had sagged down to the pavement. “He’s got the flu.”

Ms. Bridlington took her eyes off Joker. “Whatever you say, mate. Tell Alfred not to be a stranger.”

As she drove off, Joker groaned, huddling in the tasteless purple moleskin he’d stolen in Prague.

“You wouldn’t happen to have a fire extinguisher on your person, would you, Bats?” he asked, panting raggedly as Bruce hauled him to his feet. “My shoulder’s burning a hole in—”

“It would be the best thing to happen to that coat,” Bruce remarked, getting the flat door open, shoving Joker ahead of him. When the clown stumbled, seemingly not faking his legs’ inability to support him, Bruce sighed and hefted Joker back over his shoulder. “There’ll be a sling and painkillers waiting.” 

“If this is your idea of a bridal carry,” Joker muttered, “then I can’t _wait_ till later tonight.”

Ignoring Joker’s snide (if typical) remark, Bruce took the damp, run-down stairwell to the fifth story and let them into the flat using the only other key on the ring. The place was, indeed, just as he’d left it—clean and modern, recent renovation behind a seedy façade. On the open-plan kitchen island, there were medical supplies, several bags of groceries, and at least a week’s worth of clothing.

 _That’ll benefit Joker, at least,_ Bruce thought, not looking forward to spending a few more days in his suit. At least there were separate bedrooms with private baths off the main living area. One-handed, he grabbed the medical kit and one of the changes of clothing.

“How disappointing,” Joker huffed as Bruce carried him into the nearest bedroom. “I was expecting a five-star hotel in South Kensington. Some honeymoon this is!”

“Shut up, take a shower, swallow some painkillers, and go to sleep,” Bruce instructed, tossing Joker down on the bed. “There’s a sling in the med kit. I don’t care whether you use it or not, but given how loudly you’ve been complaining about the discomfort—”

“Flattered you think I’ve got the stamina to do anything but _pass out_ ,” said Joker, and did.

Bruce stood watching, motionless, for several minutes. Once it was became clear that Joker was, indeed, down for the count, he left the room, closing the door soundlessly behind him.

 _Am I slipping or letting go?_ Bruce thought, unable to clear the image from his thoughts.

The notion wasn't a comforting one, especially since it was the third time in less than a week that it haunted him. He shed his cape and utility belt en route to the other bedroom, desperate to feel lighter. He could no longer blame the fever for his fixation, much less for the fact that Colossus and its central conceit, in spite of the fact that he'd consumed the antidote, were _hardly_ clear of his system.

A metaphor within a virus within a metaphor. Even now, under the scalding spray of his first proper shower in far too long, Bruce grudgingly had to admire the brilliant gall of it.

Amidst the piles of clothing, Bruce found a plain black t-shirt and sweats. He crawled onto the bed and shoved down the covers, harshly reminded that the cuts on his palm and chest were still livid. He ignored the fierce burn of them, tipping back against the pillows as he struggled into the tee. He had to reach the sweats at the foot of the bed. He'd re-bandage himself in the morning, and then he'd...

Winter light through the slit in the curtains, harsher than it should have been. Bruce blinked.

The world swam with dust-motes for several seconds until a pair of too-sharp eyes and glinting swath of green invaded his field of vision. _Fight or flight_. He squashed the impulse, realizing there was no knife-point shoved up under his chin or gun-barrel cold against his temple—

 _The cowl_ , he thought, sick dread welling in his stomach even as Joker's eyebrows appeared to knit in facsimile of concern. It was far across the room, carelessly discarded on a side chair.

Joker shifted where he sat on the mattress next to Bruce—his skinny, uninjured left arm braced across Bruce's chest so he could lean down further, so that their foreheads nearly touched. To Bruce's perception, he smelled like milled hotel soap and dandruff shampoo from Boots.

“It's all right, Detective,” he said, aiming for wry reassurance. “I've known for a long time. I mean, who else in our two-bit, backwater Mid-Atlantic town could _afford_ —”

Even lying down and groggy as _fuck_ , Bruce decided it was worth trying to land a solid punch.

Moving faster than he had in Prague, in the throes of fever, Joker caught Bruce's wrist and held it off.

“Now, Ricky,” he chided, shifting over to straddle Bruce as smooth as you please. “That's not nice.”

“Rude,” Bruce huffed, realizing that, with forearms braced vise-like on either side of Bruce's shoulders, Joker hadn't bothered with the sling. “ _Please_ tell me you can match my name to my face.”

Joker shrugged, concerned expression shifting to a disturbingly innocent grin. “Bats?” he ventured. “Batsy, honeycakes, sugar-pie, light of my _life_? Hm, no no. I'm sure it starts with a _B_.”

Bruce sighed, wondering if he had an unusually high dosage of painkillers to thank for this unusually toothless digression. He should never have left Joker unsupervised with the med kit. Maybe there was a needle concealed in his palm, in his hair, up his sleeve—well, _no_.

Joker wore nothing but a white t-shirt and pair of argyle boxers from the clothing piles in the kitchen.

“I don't really think these suit me, either,” he confided, as if it were the only punch-line he'd ever need.

“They're an improvement over the hearts,” was all Bruce could think to say, distracted by the lack of definition to Joker's mouth. He was so fresh from the shower he hadn't even bothered with make-up.

“Next thing I know, you'll be saying they need to join my magnificent _manteau_ on the pyre.”

“I hate that coat,” Bruce blurted, startled to find they'd reached a point, without even having noticed, that they could carry on something resembling normal conversation. “You have better ones.”

Joker's expression flat-lined, but his widening gaze held the suggestion of befuddled disbelief. 

“Blue-eyed boy,” he murmured absently, dragging the callused edge of his thumb down Bruce's cheek.

“Might say the same of yourself,” said Bruce, deflecting, mouth gone dry at how quick a turn they'd taken.

“The first part, sure,” said Joker, coming back to himself, eyes glinting blue-green-grey as they narrowed to focus on the cut he was worrying at Bruce's jawline. He withdrew his hand, licked his thumb, and got back to work with his tongue peeking out between pale lips. “The latter is...debatable.”

Bruce had an inkling, of course. You couldn't prowl the streets of Gotham as regularly as he had, couldn't fight this creature in close quarters, and not have a clue. Rogues talked. Henchpeople talked. _Harley_ talked, loudly and bitterly, backed by Ivy's self-congratulatory smirk.

There was the matter of Joker's Arkham file, parts of which Bruce had tried his best to skim over.

“I'm not sure I know what you mean,” Bruce said carefully, bringing one hand up to cradle Joker's bony wrist, stilling Joker's fingers against Bruce's skin. “Or that it even matters.”

“Well, dollface,” Joker sighed, squirming under Bruce's returned scrutiny, the front of his boxers rubbing against Bruce's belly, “when they call you _freak_ , it's usually for more reasons than one.” He dropped the coy act, breaking into a slow, knowing grin. “And,” he continued, tilting his head until their foreheads touched, his parted lips scarcely brushing against Bruce's, the sudden pulse-spike in his wrist his body's only betrayal, “I've got _tons_.”

“This one specifically,” Bruce said, bringing his other hand up to cradle the side of Joker's face, because _fuck it_ , “doesn't fall under my list of same.”

“Oh, _Bats_ ,” Joker whispered, dripping sarcasm, but his pulse continued to skyrocket nonetheless. “Been watching a bit too much '90s Disney, have we?”

As beaten and exhausted as they were, Bruce knew an invitation when he saw one. He'd turned down hundreds, hadn't he, in alleys and on rooftops, in dismal Arkham cells and on desolate roadsides in the rain. He was tired of running—halfheartedly away, and then, inevitably, _back_.

Bruce let go of Joker's wrist and, using both palms to trace the lacerated planes of Joker's face, kissed Joker on the chin. He tasted the cheap soap there, finding no hint of stubble like his own.

“If it helps,” he offered, his voice rough as Joker pushed at the waistband of his underthings and shimmied out of them, “you're more my speed than Beast.”

“ _Gosh_ ,” Joker drawled, settling back in Bruce's arms, moan devolving into a giggle as Bruce's fingers tangled in his hair. “How can I say no to _that_?”

 _There's letting go, and there's outright falling,_ Bruce thought, doing his best to move with Joker's efficient shoving-down of his briefs. He had to free his hands in order to finish the job.

“There,” said Joker, pinning Bruce on his back, predatory. “Evens the playing field, doesn't it?”

Bruce rolled with each snap of Joker's teeth at his neck, each sharp-nailed pinch at his ribs, until Joker lay panting beneath him. Frost-pale, flushed, and abruptly uncertain, Joker closed his eyes.

“We didn't cover this,” he whispered, pressing his face into Bruce's chest. “There's no script.”

Bruce kissed the delicate, vein-riddled shell of Joker's ear, drawing a shudder from the inhumanly thin frame. But he _tasted_ human on Bruce's tongue, all salt and deceptive softness.

“You're assuming there ever was one?” Bruce asked. He propped himself just enough with one arm so that he could use his free hand to tilt up Joker's chin, finding the strange, fevered eyes too bright.

“Just shut up already,” Joker hissed, his fingertips tapping frantic staccato between Bruce's much-abused ribs, “and fuck me, _or_ —or do whatever it is the bat does when it's got the canary.”

For one long, sickened moment, Bruce considered turning back. Imagined stammering apologies— _apologies_ , unbelievable—before shoving Joker and his scattered clothing off the bed. Before giving him five minutes to dress and grab his scant possessions and get the hell _out_.

That he had so far failed to do this, Bruce realized, indicated weakness so staggering that shame would've been superfluous. They'd even continued to a fifth city for no reason other than—

“I don't think you wanted to come here to take in the sights,” Bruce said, wresting Joker's hands away from where they still scratched and fidgeted, pinning them at Joker's sides. “You wanted...”

“I don't even know what to _do_ with you now that we're here,” snapped Joker. “Your move.”

“So much for the theory that you wanted to come here,” Bruce continued, nuzzling into the hollow of Joker's throat, finding the taste of it identical to the taste of his ear, “to, well, _come here_?”

“And _there's_ the punch-line,” Joker sighed, practically melting under him. “Baby, I'm yours.”

Embarrassingly chaste, maybe, to do little more than kiss Joker's scarred white skin from collarbone to torso—but at least _Joker_ didn't seem to think so. He gasped and twisted, wrenching his wrists free of Bruce's grasp. Pleading and swearing, he pulled Bruce's hair to the point of pain.

When Bruce finally nosed his way from Joker's sweat-prickled belly to the space between his thighs, Joker winced. Stiff and eager, this so-called anomaly. And, in Bruce's mouth, all softness and salt.

Bruce hadn't even begun to imagine what Joker would sound like, much less that they'd live to see the day. One dip of Bruce's tongue into the shallow slickness beneath produced a startling growl. He drank it in, mesmerized by Joker's harsh rasps between each breathy, rising _ah, ah, ah_ —

Joker, pinned beneath him, twitched and came—almost _keening_ with exhausted laughter.

“At least you knew what to do on first try,” he said at length, thickly, arm thrown across his eyes.

“They use severely degrading and outdated language in your file,” Bruce managed, surprised at how quickly Joker's free hand began to rub him at an insistent pace. “They're wrong about which—”

“Monsters are monsters,” Joker sighed, uncovering his eyes, hooking his arm around Bruce's neck. “I don't care what it is I have, or what I _don't_. Leave it. Maybe next time I'll let you...”

Joker wrapped his legs around Bruce's hips, cracked heels finding the small of Bruce's back. He used the leverage to urge Bruce down, until his fingers could guide just the tip of Bruce _inside_.

“Afraid I won't be able to take much more of you, big guy,” he whispered hotly in Bruce's ear.

Bruce jerked in delirious surprise, dislodging himself. Taking hold of Joker's hips and pressing him close seemed like the next best thing, what when he was already shuddering his way through an orgasm so intense that sounds of the world beyond their window hissed into static.

“Blue-eyed boy,” Joker murmured at length, sleepily patting Bruce's cheek. “ _Ma moitié_.”

 _Other half?_ Bruce thought, too drained to reply. _Probably not the better one, either._

“I'd like to take in the sights before these lovely drugs of yours wear off,” said Joker, eventually.

“I said something about a museum, didn't I,” said Bruce, with hesitant distaste, finding that he couldn't keep from splaying his hands down the length of Joker's spine. “The last one in the _world_ you should be allowed to visit, given the nature of the exhibits.”

“Time's a-wasting,” Joker pointed out, pinching Bruce's hip. “We slept for a day and a half.”

 _If I have to die_ , Bruce thought, recalling his delirium, _I want it to be in a mystery._

“I have a better idea,” he said. “How does an alternative attraction at 221B Baker Street sound?”

“As long as I can keep the coat _and_ carry a knife,” said Joker, “you've got yourself a deal.”


End file.
